Chief's Race Puts History To Test in Ga.

It is not yet sunup here, but Linda Schrenko is already broadcasting
her message about the sorry state of Georgia's public schools.

The first Republican candidate for state superintendent of schools
in more than a generation, Ms. Schrenko has made an hourlong drive from
Columbus to LaGrange for a 7 A.M. appearance on WLAG radio's morning
talk show.

Sipping instant coffee, her hair crushed under headphones, she tells
listeners where Georgia students rank nationwide on the Scholastic
Assessment Test: 49th on the mathematics section, 50th in verbal.

"I know we've always said, 'Thank God for Mississippi,"' she says.
"Well, folks, Mississippi passed us a few years back."

The Outsider's Message

That is the message that Ms. Schrenko hopes will beat Werner Rogers,
one of three incumbent state schools chiefs seeking re-election this
year among the eight contested chiefs' races nationwide. (See related story.)

As a Republican, Ms. Schrenko is running against history. Since the
Reconstruction era, Georgia voters have put only Democrats into the top
eight positions in the state government, including schools chief.

But 1994 may be the year when G.O.P. standard-bearers breach
Democratic strongholds across the country. Georgia Democrats predict
they will retain their monopoly, but Republicans are hoping the same
anti-incumbent anger that polls suggest is driving voters to G.O.P.
candidates nationwide will put Ms. Schrenko in office and upset the
state's political status quo.

On the air this morning in LaGrange, Ms. Schrenko returns frequently
to the main theme of her campaign: that bureaucracy has grown as thick
as late-summer kudzu during Mr. Rogers's tenure.

Administrative costs chew up nearly half of the state's education
budget, she tells listeners, and dollars meant to help children never
reach the classroom.

A teacher, counselor, and principal for 24 years, she says that
schools should be controlled locally and that parents should be
suspicious of anything that emanates from Atlanta or Washington. For
example, she says, take the national goal to insure that all children
are ready for school.

"Doesn't that sound good?" she asks. "Now think about it. By what
method? Are we going to take your child at birth and put him in an
institution and raise that child?"

Before leaving LaGrange, Ms. Schrenko will deliver variations on
this message to home-schooling parents, a Democratic local
superintendent, the head of a Christian academy, and the staff at the
town's high school. At one stop, a reception and fund-raiser with the
G.O.P. faithful, she takes dead aim at Mr. Rogers.

"If this were your business," she says, "and you were looking at
49th and 50th, I'd promise you that you would fire that man. And that's
what I'm asking you to do: Fire Werner Rogers."

Republicans here and elsewhere who are banking on such
anti-incumbent appeals got fresh encouragement from a poll released
last week by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press. It
found that for the first time in 40 years, a majority of Americans
polled said they were ready to vote for G.O.P. Congressional
candidates.

In Georgia, where election ballots brand incumbents' names with an
"I," Republicans are hoping that voter anger can shift the seemingly
immovable tectonic plates under the state's political landscape.

"There's such animosity out there that if there's an I by the name,
we've got a shot at it," said Yvonne White, a Republican Party official
in LaGrange.

Most Democratic candidates will easily inoculate themselves against
anti-incumbent fever by pointing to the state's booming economy,
according to Andy Maddox, the political director of the Georgia
Democratic Party.

Experience and Credibility

Superintendent Rogers, however, may have to work a little harder
than other Democrats.

"People can see 49th or 50th in the state on the S.A.T.'s, and go,
'Well, we stink,"' Mr. Maddox said.

Actually, Ms. Schrenko's campaign stump speech about Georgia's
S.A.T. scores is a little off. South Carolina students post the worst
verbal scores in the country, leaving Georgia in 49th place on both
sections of the test.

In an interview, Mr. Rogers argued that national rankings based on
S.A.T. scores are misleading because only college-bound students take
the tests. Other widely used assessments, such as the Iowa Test of
Basic Skills and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, show
Georgia in the middle of the pack among states and gaining fast, he
said.

When talking to voters, Mr. Rogers said, he also highlights the
state's new lottery, which he expects will improve Georgia schools by
leaps and bounds. In the lottery's first year, proceeds totaled $360
million, which paid for 40,000 postsecondary scholarships, 12,000 slots
for at-risk children in prekindergarten classes, and satellite dishes
for nearly every school in the state.

As for Ms. Schrenko's talk of a bloated bureaucracy, Mr. Rogers said
that he has slashed his department's personnel by 25 percent, to just
over 900 employees. A newspaper's analysis of the department's budget
showed only 10 cents of every dollar going to administration, he
said.

Noting Ms. Schrenko's loss in a bid for county superintendent last
year, Mr. Rogers said he will run on his leadership experience.

"She doesn't have any credibility among educators," he said, "And
she doesn't even have a lot of credibility in her own
community."

Playing Hardball

This is not a friendly contest.

Last month, Ms. Schrenko filed a complaint with the state ethics
commission charging that local schools superintendents mailed
invitations to a Rogers fund-raiser at public expense and used their
positions to intimidate school employees into contributing.

Mr. Rogers said the complaint had no merit and would be dismissed by
the commission.

"It's just a harassment technique to gain her some public notice
because she's not getting it any other way," he said.

Questioned about the complaint, Ms. Schrenko admitted that she filed
it in part to attract attention to her campaign.

News coverage has been so slim, she said, that she once told
reporters she might have to throw a brick through a car windshield in
downtown Atlanta to be noticed.

Still, she said, the ethics charges accurately reflect the old-boy
Democratic network that locks parents and the average citizen out of
education in Georgia. Since she filed the complaint, other teachers and
school officials have made similar charges, she said.

Democrats "basically believe that they are untouchable and above the
law," she said. "Anything is fair for them."

Wild Cards

Most political observers, noting that Mr. Rogers has a considerable
name-recognition and fund-raising advantage, predicted that he would
win in a walk. But they also pointed to several wild cards that could
work against him.

The reality of many elections for offices like state superintendent
is that most voters know nothing about the names on the ballot. In
previous Georgia elections, this had little effect; faced with a host
of strange names, many voters pulled a single lever to register their
vote for a party's entire slate.

This year, a new state law eliminates the straight-ticket option.
Voters will have to make their choices candidate by candidate.

This wrinkle could give Ms. Schrenko a boost. Both Democratic and
Republican officials believe her gender will win her support from
voters who know little about the race.

Also, "Republicans are generally more educated and affluent and are
more likely to work their way through the ballot" to races like the one
for superintendent, said Charles S. Bullock, a professor of political
science at the University of Georgia.

The biggest wild card is the Christian Coalition, the conservative
group founded by the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, which
nationwide is running the most aggressive voter-education and
-registration drive in its history. (See Education Week, Sept. 28,
1994.)

National leaders of the officially nonpartisan coalition consider
the Georgia chapter to be one of its most effective, and both
Republicans and Democrats in the state call it a dominant force.

In the Georgia campaign's last weekend, the coalition will
distribute nearly two million voter guides through churches to help
people make their choices in all the races. The guides will list
candidates' views on such issues as school prayer, outcomes-based
education, school distribution of contraceptives, and local control of
schools.

Role of Christian Coalition

Ms. Schrenko does not agree with the coalition's position on every
issue. But she has listened to its views, and the coalition wants only
to be heard, said Patrick Gartland, who heads the Georgia chapter.

"There's no perfect church, and there's no perfect candidate," he
said. "The point is that we can come to the table and they'll listen to
us."

Ms. Schrenko said she welcomes the support of coalition members,
noting that many Christians are upset at the quality of public
schools.

"I am Christian, I attend church, and I care very much about my
religion and Christian values," she said. "But there are some things in
their agenda that I don't agree with politically."

Mr. Rogers, meanwhile, is gambling that conservative Christians'
embrace of Ms. Schrenko will turn off other voters. He declined to
answer surveys from the coalition and similar groups.

"They're all loaded, they're all yes-no answers, with no chance to
explain your position," he said.

"As more people find out that she is coming from the radical right,"
he said, "they're going to take a second look at her if they even took
a first look at her."

Plenty of Georgians will get a look at Ms. Schrenko when she tours
51 cities in the state during the week before the election. That
campaign swing will include stops at churches, but she said she will go
anywhere she can find voters who share her view about the state of
education in Georgia.

"I think I'm going to poll well everywhere," she said. "The message
that I hear on the road is, 'We're tired of paying and getting nothing
for our money."'

Vol. 14, Issue 07

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